At first, he still tried to recite the mantra as he sat there, head bobbing--this habit had been looked down upon innumerable times by those two men. Senior Wen had said, If you have to recite this thing to memorise it, stammering and without leaving a single word out, how can you integrate it into your understanding and know it inside and out? His shifu was even more direct, expressing in very simple terms that once he understood it and practiced it, he would naturally know it--in his life, he had never seen anyone memorise a simple mantra more strenuously than they memorised the Four Books and Five Classics. Evidently, Zhang Chengling’s stupidity inspired innovation.

Then Zhang Chengling suddenly recalled that both shifu and Senior Wen had gone out, and it was almost as though he was all alone in such an enormous inn. He began to worry, the sense that something was about to happen hanging over him; feeling uneasy, he tugged the bed curtains closed and pulled the blanket over his head, as though he would be safe like this--his way of thinking was incomprehensible.

He waited for a long time, pricking up his ears to listen for movement in his shifu’s room next door--of course, he had completely overlooked the fact that given his abilities, he could not have detected it even if Zhou Zishu had returned--like an anxious bunny. He waited for most of the night, but did not hear a single stirring. Eventually, unable to withstand the longing his upper and lower eyelids had for each other, he nodded off drowsily.

Only on the second morning, when he was roused by the noises of the guests in the other rooms rising from bed, did Zhang Chengling scramble from bed and run to his shifu’s room. Subsequently, he discovered with disappointment that the blanket and the pillow were cold--the two men really had not returned for the night. The waiter of the inn came upstairs to greet him, and Zhang Chengling could not do anything but head downstairs on his own for breakfast.

He was dejected and unable to lift his spirits. He found himself to be a little useless; at fifteen, sixteen, he was already a grown youth, his trousers growing shorter by the day, but yet his abilities always seemed to be stagnating. Uncle Li had saved his life, then he had met shifu, and then shifu had escorted him to Taihu, he had followed Uncle Zhao to Dongting, and found shifu again…

It was almost as if no matter where he went, no matter what he did, it was never of his own volition, but he was merely following in someone else’s tracks obtusely.

Zhang Chengling munched on the bun distractedly. For the first time in his life, he was contemplating this question of how he should make his own way in life.